 Finland arrests twins for killing 11 in 2014 Iraq massacre Helsinki (AFP) Dec 10, 2015 - Finnish police have arrested twin brothers on suspicion of killing 11 people during a 2014 massacre in Iraq claimed by the Islamic State group, officials said on Thursday. The pair, 23-year-old twins from Iraq, were arrested on Tuesday near Forssa, a town in southwestern Finland. They arrived in the country in September, but police would not confirm whether they had sought asylum. "The men are suspected of murdering by gunfire 11 unarmed and defenceless prisoners," the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said in a statement. The incident allegedly took place during a massacre in the Iraqi city of Tikrit in June 2014 as clashes raged between IS militants and Iraqi troops, according to police. Police said they tracked the men down in cooperation with the Finnish Security Intelligence Service, without elaborating. In footage of the 2014 killings, the two brothers "were not masked," NBI Chief Inspector Jari R�ty told Finnish public broadcaster, YLE. "The victims were lying on the ground and they were shot one by one," he said. In July 2015, the jihadist group released footage of the massacre in which it executed hundreds of mostly-Shiite military recruits captured at the Speicher military base in Tikrit, the hometown of the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The highest estimates put the number of executed cadets at 1,700.
Connecticut seeks to ban arms sales to US terror suspects "Like all Americans, I have been horrified by the recent terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and Paris," Governor Dan Malloy said in a statement. "They have been and should be a wakeup call to our nation. I am taking this common-sense step with this executive order simply because it's the right thing to do. It's the smart thing to do." Under the executive order, suspects on government watchlists will be denied firearm permits. State police already perform background checks on those seeking permits to purchase guns in Connecticut, the scene of a bloody massacre at a school in Newtown three years ago. Malloy now wants police to collect the names of those seeking to obtain a permit against government terror watchlists. But in order to do so, the governor of Connecticut, which has some of the toughest gun-control laws in the United States, needs approval from federal authorities. Malloy cited FBI data showing that people on terror watchlists tried to purchase firearms and explosives 2,233 times between 2004 and 2014. In more than 90 percent of those cases they succeeded. The perennial US gun control debate was revived after last week's deadly mass shooting in San Bernardino, California by a Muslim husband and wife said to have been radicalized. The couple shot 14 people dead before being killed by police.
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Tunisia's National Dialogue Quartet on Thursday urged the international community to make the fight against terrorism an "absolute priority", as it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo.
"Today, we are in a great need of dialogue between civilisations, and peaceful coexistence... Today, we need to make the fight against terrorism an absolute priority," said Houcine Abassi, secretary general of the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT), one of the four members of the Quartet.
At Oslo's City Hall, which was decked out in flowers, Abassi denounced the "barbaric and heinous terrorist acts" in recent months in Tunisia and around the world, pointing to Paris, Beirut, Sharm el-Sheikh and Bamako.
The National Dialogue Quartet, made up of four civil society groups, helped save Tunisia's transition to democracy at a sensitive moment in 2013 when the process was in danger of collapsing because of widespread social unrest.
The UGTT, the Human Rights League, the Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA), and the Order of Lawyers orchestrated a lengthy and thorny "national dialogue" between the Islamists of the Ennahda party and their opponents.
- 'A true peace prize' -
"This year's prize is truly a prize for peace, awarded against a backdrop of unrest and war," said Kaci Kullmann Five, head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
One by one, representatives of the four organisations held aloft the Nobel diploma and gold medal to a standing ovation from the specially-invited guests, including Norway's King Harald and members of the Norwegian government.
"Tunis!" cried one member of the audience.
In honouring the Quartet, the Nobel Committee shone the spotlight on Tunisia as a rare success story to emerge from the Arab Spring, which had its beginnings in the North African nation.
After hammering out compromises between groups initially diametrically opposed to each other, Tunisia successfully adopted a new constitution in January 2014 and held democratic elections at the end of last year.
At the same time, uprisings in neighbouring Libya, Yemen and Syria have led to war and chaos, and to the return of repression in Egypt.
Despite its successes, Tunisia's democratisation process remains fragile.
After a suicide attack on a bus belonging to the president's security entourage killed 12 people on November 24 -- which was claimed by Islamic State jihadists -- authorities have declared a nightly curfew in Tunis, temporarily closed the border with Libya and declared a state of emergency for the second time this year.
- Fighting terror 'by respecting rights' -
"We are very worried because each time there's a terrorist act, some... say that if there's terrorism, you have to put human rights aside," Abdessatar Ben Moussa, head of Tunisia's Human Rights League, told AFP in an interview just before the award ceremony.
"The best way to fight terrorism is to respect human rights," he said, echoing concerns expressed last week by Amnesty International.
Earlier this year, the country was hit by two other major attacks: in March, 22 people were killed at the Bardo Museum in Tunis, and in June, 38 tourists were killed when gunmen stormed a beach resort.
In July, a UN working group estimated that 5,500 Tunisians had left to fight in Syria, Iraq and Libya, flagging the country as having one of the highest numbers of people travelling to join such conflicts.
Tunisia's economy has been hard hit by this year's attacks, with its tourism industry -- which accounts for about seven percent of the economy and some 400,000 jobs -- particularly struggling since the beach massacre.
At the end of October, the number of overnight hotel stays had plunged by 60 percent from the previous year, official data showed.
The other Nobel prizes, in the fields of medicine, chemistry, physics, literature and economics, were later presented at a separate ceremony in Stockholm by Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf, followed by a gala banquet for 1,300 guests.
Each Nobel Prize consists of a gold medal, a diploma and the sum of eight million Swedish kronor (863,500 euros/$951,500), to be shared if there is more than one laureate.
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